So I've had the car off the road for a month, why to change the engine.

Ive gone for the same basic 2litre turbo engine, but its a later revision of the engine with various sensors changing mainly from a MAF sensor to MAP and some other bits, what this also means is it required a new ECU and a repinning of existing wiring. However the main reason for the engine swap was this was a forged engine, it was built for someone else and had covered a few thousand miles which i preferred as I have the worst luck with newly built engines. The engien should be good for 550bhp with the right turbo, fuelling etc...

First I removed the old engine (quite a few bits off the engine) no engine crane at this point so I jacked the chassis up and slide it under and out.

With the engine out, I used this time to really clean the rear chassis again and touch up the paint work on it as the 3 years / 5500miles of driving had left some grim.

Gave the driveshafts a quick sand and bit of paint as well just to tidy them up as well

So next was to start the work of putting the new engine in, I had already prepped the engine. If anyone else ever build ones of these, bring the engine end into the chassis from underneath if you can as going in from above was much harder, although that may be because I was doing it all by myself so struggled to move the engine about and lower it in.

I filled the engine with oil and gave it that all important first turn over and it came straight to life! Perfect. I'm now in the middle of refitting the driveshafts and tightening all the suspension before the first test drive.

Engine has been running well at the raised boost pressure of 1.2bar. Being a forged engine I notice it smokes a little bit initially where tolerances are probably not as tight as a standard engine, but once warm it has no issues.

so this winters exterior work

* Exhaust to be moved to a dual exit either side at the bottom
* Diffuser made larger and to extend further to the side
* Number plate moved
* Rear wing of some soft to be fitted